HOMOSEXUALITY AND SPORT

In Naples, the first football team with gay players is born.
The idea came, more than a year ago, to a Neapolitan actor, George Sorrentino, a football fan, who, with the intent to organize a five-a-side football team, began to look for other gay players on social networks frequented by Neapolitan homosexuals.
After receiving more than thirty accessions, the actor was able to finally form a futsal team which he called “Pochos” (a word which means kids in Argentine), team which officially was presented yesterday during a presentation to the “Pinguin cafe” in Naples, with the presence of journalists, the head of Arci Gay sports of Naples and the presenter Cecchi Paone, who long ago had the courage to make a public coming out.
The name “Pochos” was chosen in honor of the former football player of Napoli Ezequiel Lavezzi, who was nicknamed the “pocho” by Napoli fans and that since he is playing in France, has been chosen as the sexiest player by a French gay magazine.
Beyond the sport, this initiative arises mainly because in the world of sport, and football in particular, sexuality is still taboo, with too many cases of homophobia around.
The same silence that usually circulates in racing circles, about the sexual orientation of the players, is indicative of fear and prejudice, someway a symptom of violence.
As Sorrentino says: “In football, players are afraid to declare their sexual inclinations. We do not want to fight prejudice, because otherwise we got ghettoized, but we want to play football with the participation of both gay and ethers, and convince everyone that when you score a great goal, the sexual orientation of those who scored it is not a matter.”
T-shirts, created for the occasion, will have drawn a stylized Vesuvio with a rainbow, in the hope of a “nice time” after the “storm”.